2nd annual Wired 100: Positions 29-11

This article was taken from the June 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

Our second annual survey of the UK's digital power brokers from innovators to investors, meet the people our panel and readers see as key figures in 2011

Advertisement

Read next

2nd annual Wired 100: Positions 100-80

Both partners have an eye for European startups. De Rycker (21 on last year's Wired 100) is on the board of Wonga. Comolli led Accel's investment in Playfish, recently acquired by EA.

28: IAIN DODSWORTH

Advertisement

Tweetdeck

▲(82)

TweetDeck has become a hugely popular social dashboard, with growing stream-support and iPad and Android versions. UberMedia and T witter have been vying to buy the firm, which accounts for 13 per cent of third-party Twitter apps, for reported sums of up to $50 million (£30m).

27: ERROL DAMELIN

Advertisement

Founder and CEO, Wonga

New Entry

Damelin's short-term-loans company has faced criticism for its interest rates, but that hasn't bothered users: Wonga recently served its millionth customer, despite its algorithms rejecting 70 percent of loan applicants as unsuitable.

26: KRISTIAN SEGERSTRALE

Cofounder, Playfish

▲(37)

The London-based Finn scored the biggest social-sports hit last year with his first EA title since Playfish's acquisition, FIFA Superstars. Playfish is the second-largest social-gaming company in the world, with 55 million players every month -- 37 million on Facebook alone.

25: MIKE BUTCHER

Editor, TechCrunch Europe; Cofounder, Techhub

▲(57)

Now part of AOL since it acquired TechCrunch last September, Butcher is the startups' go-to tech journalist. He cofounded the TechHub workspace and was appointed to the mayor of London's Digital Advisory Board.

24: SHERRY COUTU

Entrepreneur and Angel Investor

▲(44)

Few angel investors are so closely linked to so many high-profile projects. Her investments include LOVEFiLM, Zoopla and visual-recognition company Artfinder. She brings Silicon Valley giants to the UK and is on the venture board of Cancer Research UK.

23: HUGO BARRA

Product Management Director for Android at Google

New Entry

Previously the global head of mobile products in London, Barra was moved back to the mother ship in California in December to oversee Google's expansion into mobile; the company is pushing hard thanks to the rapid growth of the Android market.

22: BRUNO GIUSSANI

European Director of the TED Conferences

New Entry

Giussani, a Swiss former journalist, curates the annual TEDGlobal conference, now in Edinburgh in July, and runs TED's European activities, which range from TEDx local events to the TED Prize and TED Open Translation.

21: ROBIN KLEIN

Founder, The Accelerator Group

▲(62)

Robin Klein made his first tech investment back in 1998, when the internet was "the information superhighway" and 56K modems were still considered speedy. Through his company, The Accelerator Group, he went on to bankroll some of the UK's most successful net enterprises: LOVEFiLM, Moo and Mind Candy. Now 63, Klein has partnered with Index Ventures, where his son Saul is a partner (see #31), to set up Index Seed, combining the speed of angel finance with Index's institutional investing experience. By the end of 2011 he will have fronted between £31,000 and £620,000 for 20 businesses.

But Klein's career could have been very different. The dotcom crash almost put him off the web: "Frankly, if I hadn't invested in Lastminute.com maybe I would have come out of all that and thought,

'Hey, this isn't a basis for building a business.'"

But having stayed in the game he has developed a personal strategy: follow smart entrepreneurs rather than industry trends. "Great people figure out the right direction," he says. "It's about working with founders, at times very intensively." Laissez-faire Klein is not, getting daily or weekly data on his investments. As chairman of short-term-loans company Wonga, he goes into its office every Wednesday to work with founder Errol Damelin. "I'm in my sixties now and I could have chosen to do much less," says Klein. "I'll continue as long as I can and hope that people will be polite enough to tell me when I'm no longer adding value, so I can go off into the sunset."

20 NATALIE MASSENET

Founder, Net-A-Porter

▲(72)

Men have been underserved by fashion e-tail, but Natalie Massenet wants to change that. With the launch of her new site, Mr Porter, in February, Massenet is looking to recreate the success of her female-centred Net-A-Porter -- in which Swiss group Richemont bought a majority share last year, valuing it at £350 million and netting Massenet a reported £50 million. "We felt men's shopping offline and online is a subset of the female shopping experience, and that wasn't doing justice to men," she says. "We thought they deserved their own space."

The site offers high-end clothing with editorial alongside.

Style advice ("Can I wear brown shoes in town?") sits beside interviews with luminaries such as graphic artist Alan Aldridge, and lists of must-buys. "We don't have those sorts of lists with women," says Massenet, 46 and based in London. "For a man, there are different categories he tends to buy in -- the office, the weekend, sports etc -- so we try to tailor for that. The whole thing is combined with content and commerce. We also entertain you, hopefully, and educate you and inspire you like a weekly magazine.

But everything is shoppable." That combination has won her numerous awards, including E-tailer of the Year and an MBE for services to the fashion industry.

Founded 11 years ago in a west London warehouse, Net-A-Porter now has three million users logging on every month from 170 countries and spending an average of £500. The brand launched The Outnet -- a fashion website specialising in end-of-line clothing -- in April 2009. It has built shopping apps for iPad and iPhone, and created four fashion channels streamed through Google TV.

So what's next? "We're launching Net-A-Porter live. This is a super-exciting development where people can see in real time what other people are buying all over the world."

19: NIKLAS ZENNSTROM

Partner, Atomico

▲(41)

Rdio, Zennström's social music service, outran Skype in the race across the Atlantic. His investment fund recently backed style-discovery site Fashiolista to the tune of $500,000 (£307,000), and he's now investing in Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds.

18: ED VAIZEY

Conservative MP, Tech Champion

New Entry

Vaizey is jointly in charge of implementing the Digital Economy Act, which makes it easier to penalise copyright infringers. As minister for culture, communications and creative industries, he has controversially championed ISPs' right to abandon net neutrality.

17: RESHMA SOHONI

Partner, Seedcamp

▼(12)

The early-stage-startup investment programme has secured another

€3 million (£2.6 million) in 2011 and continues to expand its reach. Sohoni's team was instrumental in achieving the government's new startup visa, aimed at enticing foreign entrepreneurs to the UK.

16: CHRISTIAN HERNANDEZ GALLARDO

Head of International Business Development, Facebook

New Entry

Seventy percent of Facebook users are outside the US. Hernandez, formerly of Google, is driving partnerships from London.

15: WARREN EAST

CEO, Arm Holdings

New Entry

Thanks to soaring sales of ARM-powered mobile devices (over 90 percent of smart mobile devices including the iPhone and iPad carry its chips), the Cambridge-based microprocessor supplier has had a huge year. It shipped more than 4.5 billion processors in 2010; the share price tripled.

Moshi Monsters have broken free of their virtual world and become real-life toys, available as key rings, soft toys, stickers and Top Trumps. Smith predicts that they will help his company bag £60 million in online and physical sales this year. Soon to be TV characters too.

11: DANNY RIMER

Partner, Index Ventures

▲(14)

Having invested in UberMedia, the company reported to be acquiring TweetDeck, Rimer has opened a new office in Silicon Valley and provided capital for Stack Exchange to expand. He was previously a director of Last.fm, LOVEFiLM and Skype.

Check out who and where the rest of 2<sup>nd</sup> annual Wired 100 are in our other features: